New from Cambridge University Press!

Edited By Keith Allan and Kasia M. Jaszczolt

This book "fills the unquestionable need for a comprehensive and up-to-date handbook on the fast-developing field of pragmatics" and "includes contributions from many of the principal figures in a wide variety of fields of pragmatic research as well as some up-and-coming pragmatists."

Book Information

Comparative and classificatory studies of Cariban languages, despite theirlong history (starting with Gilij in 1782), have been few andunsatisfactory, mainly due to the lack of necessary documentation of thelanguages in question. Based on a large amount of new descriptive data, aswell as on published sources, the present work attempts to demonstrate thecloser genetic relationship between a subgroup of three Cariban languages,Akuriyó, Tiriyó and Karihona, the last two of which were considered tobelong to very distant branches of the family in a still widely citedclassification (Durbin 1977). This demonstration takes the form of areconstruction of the main aspects of the segmental phonology andinflectional morphology (person, number, evidentiality, tense/aspect/mood)of the proto-language, which the author proposes to call Proto-Taranoan. Apreliminary etymological dictionary, as well as some remarks on the historyof the speakers, is also included.